(Business in Cameroon) – Between January and September 2024, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), the state-run agro-industrial company, exported only 22,640 tons of bananas. According to data from the Cameroon Banana Association (Assobacam), this figure is more than three times lower than the 75,894 tons exported during the same period in 2016, when the Anglophone crisis began in the Northwest and Southwest regions.
In 2017, one year after the crisis started, the CDC still managed to export nearly 74,000 tons of bananas by the end of September, averaging over 8,000 tons per month. Before stopping activities in September 2018 due to violence against its employees by separatist militants, the CDC had already reported exports of 34,994 tons by the end of August, which was over 12,000 tons more than the 22,640 tons shipped internationally by the end of September 2024.
Assobacam’s data highlights the ongoing difficulties faced by the company, eight years into the Anglophone crisis. Despite gradually boosting production, the company is still grappling with the severe impact of socio-political tensions in the country’s Anglophone regions.
Between 2019 and 2021, the CDC accumulated losses of CFA38.7 billion, and by June 30, 2023, the company had salary arrears of CFA35.7 billion, according to the Technical Commission for the Rehabilitation of Public and Parastatal Enterprises (CTR). The CDC remains the hardest-hit company by the separatist conflict in the Southwest and Northwest regions.
The crisis has led to the destruction of company facilities, the killing of employees, and the forced desertion of plantations by staff under separatist threats. As a result, approximately 5,500 jobs have been lost at the CDC, which is the second-largest employer in Cameroon after the public sector. Despite this challenging environment, the CDC has been making slow progress in recovering, with operations gradually resuming in some plantations abandoned due to insecurity.
At the start of 2019, Franklin Ngoni Njie, the CDC’s general manager, estimated that the company needed CFA29 billion in financial support to recover from the Anglophone crisis. However, this funding has been difficult for the state, the company’s sole shareholder, to secure.
